I’m Flattered Mr. Recruiter, But Would You Kindly Sod Off?

by David Klemke on June 2, 2011

I’ve been a keen user of social tools for a while now, over 4 years if memory serves me, and if I’m honest I’d have to say that whilst they’ve been extremely useful for my personal life they’ve really done nothing for me professionally. Sure Facebook and Twitter helped get this blog out of the doldrums of it seeing an average 1 page view a day (rocketing it to a whopping 10 per day, woo!) but apart from a single piece of software to review I haven’t really furthered my career or future prospects for wealth through using these channels. I could put that down to a major lack of trying however since my career has done pretty well without me having to rely on my social network.

I guess I’m just lucky that I’m in an industry that’s mostly meritocratic.

However recently I’ve started to get noticed by people who’ve found me through my social networking exploits, mostly through LinkedIn. Now the profile I have up there is pretty rudimentary with the only updates I’ve done to it over the past few years being to update my current job location and put a profile picture on there. Still the past 2 months has had me receive multiple phone calls, connection requests and emails all originating from LinkedIn. All of them are recruiters either eager to put me in a position they have or to build their social networks so they have a bigger candidate database, neither of which I’m particularly interested in at this current time.

You see whilst my profile might be public for everyone to see I’m not one of those people who makes connections on there for connections sake. It’s like any other social network to me, if I friend you on Facebook I consider you a friend, if I follow you on Twitter it means I’m interested in what you have to say. A connection on LinkedIn means I’ve worked with you in some capacity in the past or I see potential value in maintaining a business style relationship with you. An unsolicited request from a recruiter matches none of these rules and only serves to dilute the network of people that I’ve curated and only creates value for the recruiter. Sure its flattering that they consider me a valuable enough person on face value to want to connect with me but they’ve also done that with hundreds of other people so it means a lot less than they think it does.

For the most part though the requests are pretty harmless. I’ll get a single email asking to join my network and simply ignore it since I have no idea who they are and since I’m not currently in the market for a new job have no interest in establishing a relationship with them. However there was one persistent bugger who not only sent me multiple connection requests but also decided to email me several times and drudged up my phone number from an old resume he’d pilfered from a previous employer. I thought he would’ve got the hint after me not responding to him for 2 weeks but I guess I underestimated just how desperate some of these people can get.

You know how most of the recruiters I talk to got past the initial barrier? They offered to come see me in person and have a chat about what my needs might be. If you’re not willing to get past the barrier of doing a simple half hour meeting with me then I’m not going to be interested in giving you the recruiting bonuses and recurring commissions that one of my contracts will get you. Sure it’s a small thing but it shows me that you’re not just interested in fleshing out your candidate database and, more importantly, it gives me a chance to see if you’ll provide more value than just pimping me out to job agencies. Market knowledge is as important to me as is your ability to find jobs when I need them.

Could this all be solved by simply taking my LinkedIn profile Down? Sure, but since I’m a massive control freak I’d like the ability to have control over the presence I have on the web and with many people now googling potential employees that presence counts for a lot. I may have to deal with the odd obnoxious recruiter and may never realize any real value from it but I feel it’s still far better to have it than not. Well at least until this blog hits the number 1 spot in google for David Klemke, which it can’t be far off doing now.